**Draft #4**
Have you ever asked, “Who or what is God, anyway?”
It’s a funny question. The moment we have an answer, the moment we point at something, the moment we tie something down with an explanation, *poof* God disappears and we are left looking a little silly. Do you really want to be known as the person who has God all figured out? God is kind of like a dog that continually slips its leash.
And yet we continue to point at things or hold things down, saying “That’s God!”
Why do we do that?
I think it has something to do with how we use beliefs. Beliefs give us reasons to act. Without beliefs we are immobile. Unless we have a reason, or figure out a reason, then our actions seem pointless, meaningless. But when we find something meaningful, our lives become filled with direction and purpose. We jump into action.
But what’s really strange is that the belief or the reason we cling to doesn’t necessarily have to be true. It can be true or false or inaccurate or even confusing. It might be purely emotional. Still though, it makes us act. It makes us do something.
You are responsible for your actions. Are you responsible for your beliefs and reasons? I think it’s time to be. And that means everyone better start thinking critically.
The word ‘God’ is over-saturated with meaning for people even though we can’t really say what the word ‘God’ refers to anymore, with any amount of accuracy or consistency at least. At best, we all seem to make a personal decision (or personal definition) on who God is or what God is. Then, each of us decides whether to believe in the explanation of God or decide not to believe.
Why are we so concerned with figuring God out? Why are we so concerned with owning God, anyway? Why do some of us insist that we can influence something that is absolute or inconceivable ? Why do we try to borrow the power of something so elusive when we don’t really know for sure it exists? Why do we trust and act on our feelings so much? Why do we give authority to people that claim to know this inconceivable, absolute, yet ever-changing thing?
These are the kinds of questions I want to ask with this website. I believe we have to consciously play with these ideas.
This is all I can do: be honest and admit that all I have is my conception of my God. And that should make me laugh at myself a little. When I talk about my God I need to realize it gives me no authority over anyone else. It’s a reminder that I should listen to what others are saying, and put the effort into learning from them. Even if it means I have to change my mind or my feelings about something.
The same has to be said about authoritative institutions. The leash they have tied around their God slips and falls just as much as any explanation I could put on my God. Their authority must be removed in order to restore their more useful purpose – to serve. Act in service without authority.
It’s time to let go. Set God free. Let’s take responsibility for each other.
Instead of serving God, I want to serve others.
If this site gets a few people to think about the consequences of our explanations of God, then it has done some good. If this site helps one individual to just let go of God, then it has done some good. If this site, in any small way, helps to set God free of our ownership, then it has done some good. If this site helps someone take a joke about sensitive beliefs then we are on the way to something good.
What’s more important than being right? Doing something good.
What’s more important than having God figured out? Serving someone else.
What’s beyond belief and reason? Action.
I’m not sure I get your position. What is irony here and what is honest opinion? You have me confused.
The way you describe “god” here sounds troubling instrumental. “My God is that which makes me direct my actions and decisions according to a commitment to shared human values.” Do you define god as that commitment? Or do you hope He actually is such a force? If you think so, what in the world makes you think so?
What does the word “god” mean to you anyway? You say, you want to remove the supernatural. But what is “god” to you? Not who, not His personality, His aims, His desires for humanity, but… if we are primates, and gnus are ungulate mammals, and the Himalayans are a mountain range, roses sweet smelling, thorny flowers, and clouds water vapour, what is than the nature of “god’s” being – the way you talk about Him/Her/It?
How about I rewrite this?
It’s terribly clunky.
The irony lies in our attempts to conceive of something inconceivable. By doing so we get the opposite of the intended. And what’s more, we serve our own purposes when we do so.
I was trying to look at how people use the word. People do use the word in an instrumental way, not much has stopped that. I’m not trying to pin down ‘God’ with definitions but I’m trying to understand people’s relationship to the word.
I’m going to try again, but with a different angle.
Hmm. Just for the record and in case we keep talking about this sort of stuff: I do believe in fairies, I do, I… um. I mean, I believe in God. Seriously. A God with personality, and will, and who intervenes. All the time, in fact. And I believe that a lot of the bible – while indubitably written by fallible humans (and in places rife with their personal and cultural prejudices, not to mention occasionally lethally boring) on the whole gives a pretty good description of God’s character, i.e. one mirrored in the real world as I percieve it.Of course, I also regularely talk to my spirit guides. And they answer. So, I may just be totally nuts. ^_^(What do you believe? Bc I’m not certain I could discern that so far. If you already blogged it, a link will satisfy my curiosity. Just tell me along whether it’s straight or ironic. I seem to be unable to tell those apart here.
Hey FF,
I kind of gathered that from your comments on tildeb’s site.
“a pretty good description of God’s character — one mirrored in the real world as I perceive it.”
That’s pretty close to my point. We come to perceptions about the concept of God and then reject or embrace it personally. And in doing so we enter into a relationship of power with the concept. For example, “I’m on God’s side” then becomes a reversed equation of “God is on my side.” Or if I lack belief, then the concept doesn’t hold sway over me but it creates a struggle of language when talking with believers. Instead of letting god(s) be, we try to nail them down.
I want to recognize how I can only have “my God” and I can never be correct in putting descriptions or limitations on such a thing. I can never really be consistent either. Some days I seek my God or I seek explanations and meanings. Other days I do not. Mostly I just laugh at myself because of how ridiculous it is to take myself seriously.
So instead I want to focus on how the use of the concept causes people to act. Some people become very altruistic, some very responsible, some judgemental, others mental, etc.
I was raised a liberal Christian. After a while I didn’t want to be associated with the label ‘Christian’ because it didn’t mean to others what I thought it meant to me. And I discovered I could live my life well without appeals to beliefs, authoritative conditions or the supernatural. Mostly I’ve been agnostic but about a year ago I came across the label “anti-label-ist” and have been trying that out. I don’t believe belief is a useful answer to much so I don’t believe. I just do and try to live in the consequences.
I don’t think I have a specific post on my personal beliefs. Maybe My Theology? I’m definitely going to rewrite this thing, but it may take some time due to a series of other posts I want to get to. Kinda related…
“We come to perceptions about the concept of God and then reject or embrace it personally. And in doing so we enter into a relationship of power with the concept.” / “I want to recognize how I can only have “my God” and I can never be correct in putting descriptions or limitations on such a thing. I can never really be consistent either. Some days I seek my God or I seek explanations and meanings.”You mean, since the only certain experience anyone ever has of God is purely subjective, and we do not have any objective or scientific “proof”/”evidence” of his existance and nature, we might as well shut about it?I don’t know. Couldn’t the same be said about love? Or jealousy? Or anger? Or coming of age? And yet there is zillions of films, songs, and books about these things. Isn’t Holden Caulfield’s story purely subjective – and yet generations of lives have been enriched by reading “The Catcher in the Rye”.There was one thing Mr. Dennet said in that long lecture about “deepities” that reminded me of Arthur Koestler’s concept of “bisociation”. I don’t know how Mr. Dennet would define “real” profundity. He seems a bit on the sarcastic side. It is always easy to make fun of other people’s revelations. But I am with Koestler that humour, creativity, and genius all exist in that gulf between two possible but apparently impossible to combine readings of a single idea – within the deepity.Yes – it is impossible to truly nail down the concept of god, just as it is impossible to nail down the experience of love – or even to create a different word for every possible meaning of “love”. While using the same word for romantic love, for agape, for lust, for parental or filial love, for patriotism, for hedonism, and for all the other possible aspects of the word often leads to confusion, I believe it also allows us to expand our, well, our souls, by letting out inner train of thought jump tracks from time to time between these meanings. I think too much clarity can also lead to sterility.But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try to “nail it down” – even as we are aware that we will never truly succeed, and probably never even should. If we leave the concept intentionally vague and undefined, we give up those different tracks and thus the ability to jump them, don’t you think? That sort of vaguery just leads to one big swamp that ends up being no longer traverseable at all.”I want to focus on how the use of the concept causes people to act. Some people become very altruistic, some very responsible, some judgemental, others mental, etc. “I think I sort of adressed that in another post, this morning, though I suppose the nuance is differently here: In the other post I wondered why you thought that the force that makes peeps altruistic, responsible, judgmental, etc was divine. If you phrase it like this, though… hmm…How does my concept of God make me act? I don’t think God’s presence makes me act in particular way, not outside, not directly. “My God” (lol) doesn’t demand of me to do anything in particular. He’s not a particularely moral God. (Could you imagine a moral God creating a world like this? I can see no reason to think so.) I often pray (and to me, pray means listen, not request), and God never told me not to steal, or not to lie.My guardian spirits kick my arse on occasion. They tend to make me “do the right thing”. Not so God. “My God” is much too distant for that. Not that He doesn’t see me indiviually… just… from a great distance… and with a certain amount of disinterest… just one of many details in the vast canvas of the world.Hmm. The memory of ‘Nette, and of Neikuts, and of Sim all demand of me to behave in a certain way: To take care of myself, to take care of Meryem and of the child, Cay. To stop spreading hurt and fear in the world, but to be part of something constructive, something that builds instead of taking away, even if my contribution is very small and without overt glory…What does “my God” demand of me? A few times I thought I knew what He wanted – and it was very precise things – though in retrospect I’m not certain if that was Him at all…I guess… he wants me to love and serve Him. And that means, hmm, that means (to quote Joe Campbell again) to say yes to it all. To give up the life I had planned so as to be able to live the one He has prepared for me. To accept the world with open arms…i thank god for this most amazingday: for the leaping greenly spirits of treesand a true blue dream of a sky; and for everythingwhich is natural which is infinite which is yes(i who have died am alive again today,and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birthday of life and love and wings. and of the gaygreat happening illimitable earth)e.e. cummings
Tell me if my comments are too long. I find it hard to pin these ideas down more concisely. Maybe that’s a sign of how flawed they are. Just… to me these questions are pretty important, and it is hard to find peeps to talk to about them…
Wow, this is lengthy! But yea, I’m totally with you on getting people to talk about this kind of stuff. Which is weird because this stuff controls how we see everything every day! Why wouldn’t people talk about this stuff???
I don’t mind the length but I might not get to everything on the level it deserves, if that’s all right.
Your subjective point is very important. We live subjective lives after all, don’t we. And we are meaning-finders, explainers, idea-welders (according to Jordan Peterson at least
). We get very unsettled about things that have no understandable causes or explanations.
Vague definitions are a problem, yes, and does lead to some swampy territory. But my worry here is that if the definition is in the hands of a select few then we aren’t collectively taking part and language can be lorded over us. Language is way too powerful to leave in the hands of any self-justifying controlling body. I guess I just don’t like the idea of someone’s meaning in life being a passive thing governed by someone else, which is what I see when people accept a religion whole-heartedly. Or something so personal as a relationship with ‘your god’ that doesn’t get edited through the lens of subjectivity.
Dennett — I tried a quick search to find a replacement, but all the other youtube videos of Dennett and Moyer have audio/video synching issues. Sucks.
oh — http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5640093862168820605#
the whole 1 hour thing. That’s a bit lengthy though, and I can’t remember what part I tried to focus on.
“To accept the world with open arms…”
Beautiful. I’m thinking about making some changes for the look of the site. Mind if I use this as a new slogan?
Angry Birds Online…
…right here are a few references to internet pages which we connect to seeing as we think they are worthy of visiting….
edit: spam? I’ve never played Angry Birds. See what happens…
Hi just wanted to give you a quick heads up and let you know a few of the pictures aren’t loading properly. I’m not sure why but I think its a linking issue. I’ve tried it in two different browsers and both show the same outcome.
note: I think it’s due to a change I made in servers. some images got left behind, unfortunately.
Thanks for the heads-up though.